Cinématon (1978)
- Directed by
- Gérard Courant
- Genre
- documentary film, silent film
- Country
- France
- Runtime
- 197h 08m
- Rating
- 4.9 of 10 from 7 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
This is an experimental film made of thousands of silent three-minute clips. Each clip shows a different celebrity or friend of the director doing something simple for the camera. The whole movie was shot over 30 years and lasts 157 hours.
experimentalpatientintimatehypnoticminimalistcontemplativefragmentedpersonallo-fi
What happens
Cinématon is a 157-hour-long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 30 years from 1978 until 2009, it consists of a series of over 3,111 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Sergey Parajanov, Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach in April 2010. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
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We Spin Around the Night Consumed by the Fire (1978)
Ulysse est revenu (1978)
Genèse d'un Repas (Origins of a Meal) (1978)
Emak-Bakia (1926)
Les hautes solitudes (1974)
Travel Log (1978)
Rien que les heures (1926)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.